MOL: The real-life DEATH STAR: US researchers developing laser 100,000 times more powerful than all of Earth's power stations combined

[Tyron Biggums]

In "True Genius" Val Kilmer used his laser to to pick up chicks.

 

One purpose of the pulse is to transfer more energy over a short period of time without burning out the laser device. Another purpose would be to to make the single pulse appear to be a beam.   This allows you to observe the behavior of the laser pulse more easily as you expose it to different phenomina...  Like searching for dark matter...   I mean have you ever tried to observe a 3 femtosecond event? (0.00000000000003 seconds)   It would be much simpler to pulse the laser,  create the appearance of a beam, and then observe that,  cycling up and down the pulse rate like you would zoom in and out a microscope to understand microscopic observations.

 

But yes the pulse does make the laser potentially more dangerous, destructive, because it would allow you to transfer more power faster;  then again that's the entire reason you would build a super powerful laser like this which is several orders of magnatude more powerful than anything which has come before it..

 

I'll bet you one pulse would cut through a human though...   10 pulses would cut through a human standing behind an Abrams tank....   100 pulses would cut through a human standing behind ten abrams tanks... etc..

Thanks for sharing.  Is this prototyped yet? Or would that be need to know information?

 

Very impressive technology to say the least. Would love the opportunity to invest with the patent holders.

[JMS]

Thanks for sharing.  Is this prototyped yet? Or would that be need to know information?

 

Very impressive technology to say the least. Would love the opportunity to invest with the patent holders.

 

Sounds like we've built it over here and we are shipping it to eastern europe to re-assemble it.   No you can't buy stock in the company which developed it.   Lawrence Livermore Lab,  is a federally funded research institute associated with the University of California.. They are the ones which developed HAPLS according to the article I read.

 

I think it's kind of like building a super computer.   If you want the fastest computer in the world today, the engineering is well understood, all you need is the budget to beet the last guys efforts.   Add more CPU's..create more Floating Point Operations per Second.. (FLOPS).    We've basically been getting a new champion super computer on this model every few months for decades.

[Tyron Biggums]

Sounds like we've built it over here and we are shipping it to eastern europe to re-assemble it.   No you can't buy stock in the company which developed it.   Lawrence Livermore Lab,  is a federally funded research institute associated with the University of California.. They are the ones which developed HAPLS according to the article I read.

 

I think it's kind of like building a super computer.   If you want the fastest computer in the world today, the engineering is well understood, all you need is the budget to beet the last guys efforts.   Add more CPU's..create more Floating Point Operations per Second.. (FLOPS).    We've basically been getting a new champion super computer on this model every few months for decades.

Thank you for sharing.

 

A little off topic, but have you checked out cryptocurrency farming?

The application is to do physics experiments, to try to break down atoms and understand how things are put together.  The longer term goal is to produce fusion energy.  

 

 

Sure.  But it has to be portable and aimable to do that, and you would need to have all this complicated machinery independently powered somehow and perfectly calibrated.  It works on the USS Enterprise, but not in the real world any time soon.

 

Lets put it this way.  If you dropped the Great Pyramid on an Abrams tank, the tank surely would be destroyed.  Does that mean that the Great Pyramid is a dangerous weapons system?   I really don't think so - the tricky part is levitating the Great Pyramid in the first place.  

[Predicto]

The fact that you may be able to make a workable airborne laser has very little to do with whether you can make a weapon out of this "laser 100,000 times more powerful than all of Earth's power stations combined."  They have almost nothing to do with one another except that both are forms of lasers.

[Bang]

Tell 'em we already got one.


~Bang

[JMS]

The fact that you may be able to make a workable airborne laser has very little to do with whether you can make a weapon out of this "laser 100,000 times more powerful than all of Earth's power stations combined."  They have almost nothing to do with one another except that both are forms of lasers.

 

Yes I agree with you,  what I was trying to suggest is this technology might not be particularly useful as a weapon.   Not because it's not weaponizeable, but because as a weapon it's not an improvement over what we already have.   While this laser pulse is more powerful than anything we already have,  it's maximum cycle rate is so small  10 cycles per second.   It's possible a less powerful laser with a greater cycle rate of say 100, 1000, or 10,000 cycles per second would actually put more energy on target over a 2,4, 8 second period of time.    I believe both airborne and land based tactical lasers have been successfully tested nearly a decade ago for military purposes with significantly greater cycle rates...

 

I do know what we have today requires a prolonged exposure to take out a target like a iICBM,  mortor shell,  or rocket.